Brennan: Armstrong sends smokescreen instead of truth

Feb. 20, 2013
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For all the good Lance Armstrong did in admitting to Oprah Winfrey last month that he doped to win his seven Tour de France titles, he has chosen not to go forward and help clean up cycling. Wednesday, he refused again to cooperate with investigations into how pervasive doping is in cycling. / George Burns, AP

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

by Christine Brennan, USA TODAY Sports

To hear Lance Armstrong and his apologists tell it, he is now going to be the truth and light in cycling. He will be "the first man through the door" to answer every question at a gathering he is calling an "International Tribunal," something that doesn't even exist, to save the sport of cycling from people like him.

This was the storyline that Armstrong's lawyer, Tim Herman, wanted you to focus on Wednesday, not the much more important news that the world's most notorious sports cheater was once and for all refusing to testify under oath to the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency -- the organization he is required to deal with -- to help clean up his sport.

Apparently, being banned for life from all sanctioned sports has given Lance plenty of time to work on his technique with the old bait-and-switch.

Armstrong despises USADA, the organization that finally brought him to justice after more than a decade of lies. He would rather spend hours on Oprah's couch than a minute on USADA's. He's that afraid of USADA CEO Travis Tygart, the first person to finally make Armstrong blink.

So, Wednesday, Armstrong came up with what he thought was a really interesting idea to make everyone think he now cares about cleaning up cycling. Herman began talking about "an international effort (that) will be mounted, and we will do everything we can to facilitate that result."

My goodness, you might say, Lance really wants to do something good for his sport. Only problem is, it's not a new idea, and Lance will be horrified to find out who encouraged this idea more than four months before he did. It was USADA.

"No one wants to be chained to the past forever, and I would call on (cycling's international federation) to act on its own recent suggestion for a meaningful Truth and Reconciliation program," Tygart said last Oct. 10. "We believe that allowing individuals like the riders ... to come forward and acknowledge the truth about their past doping may be the only way to truly dismantle the remaining system that allowed this 'EPO and Blood Doping Era' to flourish."

So, having conquered every aspect of the fine art of performance-enhancing drug use in cycling, Lance has now moved to a whole new area of cheating: plagiarism.

This was USADA's idea well before Lance latched onto it, and it's a good one. Something has to be done, and it won't be Armstrong leading the way. It will be USADA, in conjunction with the World Anti-Doping Agency and other national doping agencies it works with so closely.

It won't be Armstrong because he's radioactive. He said he told the truth to Oprah. He didn't. He says he wants to tell the truth to someone else now. History tells us he is likely to never do that, not with all the criminal and civil liability that he faces if he does. (Although talking overseas rather than under oath to USADA would definitely lessen those concerns.) It would be wonderful if he did come clean and deliver a treasure trove of information in the fight against doping in cycling (and all sports), but USADA has given him several opportunities, and he keeps saying "No" in the most belligerent manner.

With or without Armstrong, there are three basic paths moving forward for international cycling, the dirtiest sport on earth. The first would be the easiest: blow it up. Don't just ban the cyclists; ban the entire sport. Just shut it down for a year or two, replace everyone in the old federation, and don't start holding races until an independent group declares that it has cleaned up its act.

This will never happen because international sports leaders never put themselves out of business, but we can dream, can't we?

The other two options are shaded in bureaucratic gray. The sports drug police around the world can continue to do what they are doing now, following leads and working with their local and national authorities to catch cycling's cheaters and bring them to justice, as USADA did so spectacularly with Armstrong.

Or, they can do what USADA suggested in October and followed up with just three weeks ago in a serious, eight-point international proposal, to grant some type of amnesty to the worker-bee riders who tell the truth about the sport in order to catch the bigger fish â?? the team owners, doctors and the like.

This is what USADA refers to as "Truth and Reconciliation." At the moment, it doesn't exist. It's only an idea. A good idea, but not a real one. Past being prologue, Armstrong will continue to produce smokescreens to try to confuse the public into thinking he's participating in something that's real, when the only true progress is being made by the drug police who finally caught him.